Friday, May 30, 2014

Where would we be as cooks and bakers without the egg? It is
so familiar to us that perhaps we don’t give it due attention nowadays. Surely there is no other ingredient which is
so ubiquitous, so universal, and so essential to the cuisine of so many nations?

Almost every culture uses eggs in its cooking. The
exceptions may best prove this general rule. Vegans of course eschew eggs, and
historically some African groups apparently did not eat eggs – nor did Pacific
Islanders, although they quickly realised their value to visiting ships, and
collected eggs to sell to the crew. For most of the rest of us, it is a rare
week that we do not have egg in one form or another, even if we do not notice
it because it is an ingredient in a cake or a biscuit.

We use eggs in beverages (egg-nog at Christmas), in soups
(the egg-drop soups of Greece and China), and in sauces (Hollandaise and
mayonnaise, and the famous and ancient ‘egg sauce’ with salt cod). We eat them
hard-boiled in sandwiches and salads, and sometimes curries. Without its egg,
Sunday breakfast, burgers with ‘the lot’ and our entire cake and biscuit
repertoire would fall very short of ideal. Can you imagine a modern kitchen
without eggs?

Such is the richness and variety of the world’s cultures
however that one person’s eggy delicacy is another’s nausea-inducing horror. In
the Phillipines a great delicacy is balut
– a boiled fertilised and half-developed duck or chicken embryo - complete
with recogniseable beak and eyes and feathers along with some remaining yolk.
In China there is a great demand for ‘hundred’ (or ‘thousand’) year old eggs
(actually only several weeks or months old) prepared by curing in a mixture of
salty, alkaline clay – a process which results in a creamy green yolk nestled
in the ‘white’ – now a transparent brown jelly. Both these national delicacies
are apparently acquired tastes.

Eggs are also fundamental to many origin myths, fables, and
folk-tales. They have been used in the past in art as a binder for paint and as
a varnish, in many industries such as the preparation of fine leather, calico,
and fine wine. Large shells have been used as drinking cups or cooking vessels,
and powdered shells to make imitation ivory as well as tooth powder. Eggs have
been used widely in medicine. They are almost unique amongst foods as being
considered suitable for ever age and every state of health or illness. In olden
times they were believed to neutralise a swallowed poison, to be soothing to
diseased eyes, to help dislodge fish-bones in the throat, and to be valuable in
the preparation of poultices and plasters.

From a culinary point of view, what I find most fascinating
about the use of eggs is just how longstanding are some of their most popular
uses. Take custard for example – the style suitable for filling your fruit
tarts or profiteroles. I give you below a recipe from the fourteenth century,
for ‘boiled cream’ made with cream and eggs. It is made ‘standynge’
(‘standing’) thickness, sweetened with sugar, flavoured and coloured with
saffron, and finally sliced (‘lesked’) and garnished with borage flowers (or
violets, in other versions of the time.) How wonderful does that sound?

For to make
Cremmeboyle.

To make Creme boyle take cowe creme and
the yolkes of egges clene drawen & welle beten and boyle it up that it be
standynge and put thereto sugre and colour it with saffron and salt it and
leske it in dyshes and plante therin flours of Borage and serve it.

And here is a rather interesting way of frying your eggs:

To fry eggs as round as balls.

Having a deep frying-pan, and three
pints of clarified butter, heat it as hot as for fritters, and stir it with a
stick, till it runs round like a whirlpool; then break an egg into the middle,
and turn it round with your stick, till it be as hard as a poached egg; the
whirling round of the butter will make it as round as a ball, then take it up
with a slice, and put it in a dish before the fire: they will keep hot half an
hour and yet be soft; so you may do as many as you please. You may serve these
with what you please, nothing better than stewed spinach, and garnish with
orange.

Thursday, May 29, 2014

A
little while ago I gave you the instructions for “The Order of meats on a fleshday” from Thomas Dawson’s A Booke of
Cookerie. And the order of Meates to bee served to the Table … (1620.)
Today I offer you the suggested bill of fare for a Fish Day:-

And here are two recipes from the book which fit this bill of
fare nicely:

For Boyl’d Fish.

To boyle a Breame.

Take white Wine, and
put it into a pot, and let it seeth, then take your Breame and cut him in the middest,
and put him in, then take an Onyon and chop it small, then take Nutmegs beaten
Sinamon and Ginger, whole Mace, and a pound of Butter, and let it boyle
altogether, and so season it with salte, serve it upon soppes, and garnish it
with fruit.

To make a Sallet of all kinde of
Hearbes.

Take your hearbes and
pick them very fine into faire water, and picke your flowers by themselves, and
wash them cleane, then swing them in a Strayner, and when you put them into a
dish, mingle them with Cowcumbers or Lemons payred and sliced, also scrape
Suger and put in Vineger and Oyle, then spread the flowers on the top of the
Sallet, and with every sorte of the aforesaid thinges, garnish the dish about,
then take Egges boyled hard, and lay about the dish and upon the Sallet.

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

During World War II in Britain, the general public were
encouraged to return to (or re-learn) the art of foraging in order to
supplement or augment rationed foodstuffs.Most of the emphasis was on wild vegetation, there not being a great
deal of wild game accessible to the ordinary person. The concept was not just
tossed out to the population to follow-up as they saw fit, it was actively
promoted and resourced by the government. The Ministry of Food published
several leaflets on how to find and use the “Hedgerow Harvest” and County Herb
Committees were set up to organize collections on a large scale. The latter was
directed particularly towards wild foods with health benefits – many of the
sources of fruit no longer being available – and also included foods for livestock
feeding, such as horse-chestnuts (‘conkers.’)

One item singled out for particular attention was
the rose-hip - a valuable source of vitamin C. The national diet was at some
risk of shortage of Vitamin C due to the cessation of importation of fruit such
as oranges during the war. The solution was to ask the public to collect rose
hips from wild or cultivated bushes, the harvest then to be processed by
commercial companies into syrup which could then be made available in the
shops. The details and success of the campaign are eloquently told in two
articles in The Times [London, England] in autumn of 1941, and mid-winter
1942.

SYRUP FROM ROSE
HIPS.

ORGANIZED
COLLECTION OF FRUITS.

A
national week for the collection of rose hips to be converted into syrup will
open next Sunday. The Ministry of Health and the Department of Health for
Scotland state that these fruits, which in the past have been allowed to go to
waste, are 20 times as rich in Vitamin C as oranges.

The
collecting is being organized chiefly through schools, boy scouts, and girl
guides, the women’s institutes, and the Scottish womens’ rural institutions.
The hips, which must be ripe, can be gathered from wild or cultivated bushes,
but they should be free from bits of stems and leaves. Haws, the red berries of
May, are not wanted. The picking season extends until the end of October.

The
collecting organizations will supply the hips in bulk to firms who have agreed
to pay 2s. for 14 lb. (minimum 28 lb.), carriage forward. It is hoped that some
500 tons will be converted into syrup, will be converted into syrup, which will
be marketed at a reasonable price.

The Times, 22 September, 1941

ROSE HIP SYRUP

SUPPLIES ON SALE
NEXT MONTH.

National
rose hip syrup, the Ministry of Health announced yesterday, will be on sale in
chemists’ shops in England, Scotland, and Wales, from February 1. Rose hips are one of the richest natural
sources of vitamin C, which is particularly beneficial for children, and the
syrup is therefore a useful war-time
substitute for orange juice and a distinct improvement on blackcurrant syrup.
It is not intended that rose hip should be used by one and all as a tasty
addition to everyday diet, but that is should be used for young children only.

The
present supplies of the syrup are the result of a campaign organized last
summer and autumn by the Ministry of Health and the Department of Health for
Scotland for collecting rose hips. School teachers, boy scouts, girl guides,
the W.V.S., women’s rural institutions, and other voluntary organizations
co-operated, and some 200 tons, equivalent to 134,000,000 hips, were collected.
The hips were converted into syrup by selected firms, and their total output
amounts to 600,000 bottles.

A
teaspoonful of rose hip syrup a day will supply half the vitamin C needs of a
child. It can be taken neat or diluted with water, and has a pleasant flavour.
Plans are being made for another collection of rose hips on a national scale
this year.

The Times,
15 January 1942

Several recipes using rose-hips were included in the
Ministry of Food’s leaflet Hedgerow
Harvest in 1943, including this rather interesting one:

Rose Hip
Marmalade

The
ruby-red seed of the rose makes an excellent marmalade. If you soak the
cleaned rose hips for 2 hours in plain cold water; then let boil for 2 hours,
and strain. Measure
the puree and add l cup of brown sugar to each cup of puree. Let boil down to
thick consistency, pour into sterilized glasses, and seal.

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

I have had
today’s story in mind for a while, and today seems the perfect day to tell it
to you, as it sheds some interesting perspective on yesterday’s post on feeding
the military in 1942. The story is in the form of a letter to the editor of The Times [London] on November 10, 1855.
The correspondent relates a conversation he had some 35 years earlier with a “Peninsular
guardsman” who made some observations about the differences in both supplies of
and attitudes to field rations between British and French soldiers. I am
guessing that the guardsman’s experiences were during the Hundred Days war of
1815 – but I await clarification and comments from the military historians
amongst you.

CAMP
COOKERY

TO
THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.

Sir,- The leading article on the
subject of Aldershot, in The Times of the 6th inst., reminds me of
the confessions of an old Peninsular Guardsman, with whom I formerly travelled
in Spain. John Denny’s words were, so far as I remember them, to this effect:
“The French, Sir, never got so good rations as our own men, and yet on the
whole they managed to live better, as far as we could pick up a notion of their
ways from prisoner, or outpost sentries, indeed, when there was not much going
on. Whatever they had in the way of meat they popped into the pot along with
dry old ammunition crusts, and any sort of vegetables they could rap or rend,
no matter if ‘twas nettle tops; and what with a sprinkle of pepper and salt,
which don’t take much room to carry about, they contrived to make a good
‘stodgy’ savoury mess, fit to stick to a fellow’s ribs, as one might say. Now,
what did we do? What as soon as a man got his ration of meat, he stuck it on
the end of his ramrod – that is, most of ‘em did, till they come to know better
– and he went and held it over the hot wood embers till all the fat and
goodness of it frizzled out into the fire, and he got nothing most times but a
black bit of dry stuff hardly fit for a dog to erat. And that’s how we went on
for a long time, for want of the knowledge them French always had of making the
most of everything.”

How far are our untrained men advanced
in this species of knowledge since the time – some 35 years ago – when the veteran
John, whose good sense I much admired, uttered this reminiscence of past times?

Trusting that it may be pertinent to
the purpose of your recent well advised strictures, I have the honour to
remain,
Yours obediently,

VOYAGER.

Malvern, Nov. 8.

Nettles were of course well known and used in Britain at the
time, and were a welcome springtime addition to the soup pot as well as being
prized for their perceived medicinal benefits. This knowledge however does not
seem to have percolated down to the ordinary British soldier of the time, who
was likely drawn from the urban poor and had lost the lore of foraging. French men
of the same era clearly had not lost touch with the land in the same way – or perhaps
they had remained more domesticated. Interesting, Non?

In a previous post I featured nettles (here) and they are
mentioned in several other stories, but there is surely room for more ….

Nettles and Dandelions.

These,
gathered before they are in flower, may be dressed like turnip tops, and served
on toast like spinach, and are a valuable and wholesome addition to the list of
vegetables.

The English Cookery Book: Uniting a Good
Style with Economy,

by
John Henry Walsh (1859)

To Stew Lettuces,
Nettles, etc.

Wash them
well, drain them, and put them in boiling water with a little salt; boil them
from twenty to thirty minutes, press the water from them, and then chop them a
little; heat them in a saucepan with a little butter, pepper, and salt,
dredging in a little flour as you stir it in; add a little cream, and stew
quickly till it is tolerably dry. Stir in a little vinegar or lemon juice, and
serve hot with snippets.

The principles and practice of vegetarian
cookery. By the author of 'Fruits and farinacea the proper food of man' by
John Smith of Malton (London, 1860)

Monday, May 26, 2014

Whether or not the daily challenge of needing
to decide what to have for dinner and then having to provision and actually cook
the meal is a manoeuvre you abhor or embrace, think on the scale of
your problem, and perhaps take some hints from the military. The following story
is abbreviated from one appearing in the New
York Times of May 24, 1942 - right in the middle of World War II.

2,000,000 Men for Dinner.

By Major General Edmund B. Gregory.

If housewives
think they have a few problems they ought to keep the Army Quartermaster Corps
in mind. The Army consumes 12,000,000 pounds of food a day and it's the best
fed in the world.

Mr. Samuel Johnson
once remarked that men seldom think so seriously about anything else as they do
about their dinner, and the Quartermaster Corps, which is responsible for
feeding upward of 2,000,000 soldiers in our army three times a day, operates on
the theory that this goes double for fighting men. We recognize that a well-fed
Army is better prepared to do battle. Further, these soldiers are our own sons,
and our neighbours’ sons, and they not only need but deserve the best we can
give them.

The American fighting man today is well
fed – wherever he is. The gigantic job of feeding him involves supplying one
kind of ration for men in the Arctic, another for their comrades in the
tropics, and an untold variety of meals for their fellow-troups who are
stationed at intermediate points. The Quartermasters Corps purchases from
10,000, 000 to 12,000,000 pounds of food each day, and that in itself is a
man-sized job. It begins to look more complicated when it is recalled that some
of the men we must feed are 12,000 miles away; that others are engaged in
unique types of duty where normal rations either cannot be supplied or else are
unsuited to their requirements, and that even those engaged in normal troop
duty are scattered throughout the 3,000,000 square miles that make up the
United States.

The far-flung fronts
of World War II complicate the Army supply problem as no other war in our
history has done; they make this conflict primarily, as Hanson Baldwin said, a
“quartermaster’s war.”

… The soldier at mess
is not interested in the fact that we bought some 580,000 head of cattle last
year, which is equivalent to a steer every fifty-four seconds. What does
interest him is the roast beef on his plate. He gets plenty of it, well cooked.
He won’t notice that he is eating more kinds of vegetables than he did back in
his civilian days, nor will he realize that what is actually taking place is a
revolution in his dietary habits. As a civilian he ate what he liked; in the
Army he eats what he likes too, but he augments it with essential foods he never
bothered to eat before.

… Master menus are
prepared for each day of the month. They vary with the seasons and in
accordance with what can be bought on the market. On this Sunday, your soldier
in the Second Army Corps Area (New York, New Jersey and Delaware) will be
eating three meals based on the menu that appears on this page.

To insure that every
Army meal contains all the elements of a good diet, we have adopted the
recommendations of the Nutrition Committee of the National Research Council as
a minimum standard, and the master menu is so planned that each mess equals or
exceeds these recommendations.

… In the main, the
Army diet suits the American appetite. There is plenty of beef, poultry and
pork for the heavy meal eater, plenty of apple pie and ice-cream, the favorite
American desserts, and plenty of all the other food that most Americans enjoy.
There are vegetables every day for the confirmed vegetarian, and fish is served
as often as it is found on the average home table.

ARMY
MENU, MAY 24, SECOND CORPS AREA.

BREAKFAST.

Grapefruit

Oatmeal
Fresh Milk

Creamed
ground beef on toast

Fried
potatoes

Toast Butter Coffee

DINNER

Vegetable
soup

Roast
fresh ham with raisin sauce

Boiled
sweet potatoes Creamed onions

Lettuce
salad with Russian dressing

Bread
Butter

Ice
Cream Coffee

SUPPER

Italian
spaghetti with meat sauce

Sliced
cheese buttered broccoli

Apple-celery
salad with mayonnaise

Bread Butter

Gingerbread Coffee

I doubt if basic
Army cooking had changed much over the decades before WW II, so as the recipe
for the day I give you a couple of no-frill ideas for cooking ham from the cookery
manual used by Army cooks during the previous war - the United States War
Department’s Manual for Army Cooks
(1914.)

281. Ham, boiled (for 60 men).

Ingredients used:

20 pounds ham.

Wash and scrape the ham, removing any
part that may be decayed; place in sufficient water to cover it and allow it to
boil for one hour; remove from the range and allow to cool before taking from
the water; slice and serve either hot or cold.

282. Ham, fried (for 60 men).

Ingredients
used:

25
pounds ham.

Trim off most of the fat and slice
thin: if salty, parboil; fry in its own grease in the oven or top of the range.

Friday, May 23, 2014

In the days
long before refrigeration, one way of keeping meat for a prolonged period was
to bake it in a pie – a particular sort of pie that could be kept as long as “a
twelvemonth” and was especially useful for provisioning long voyages and so on.
It strikes horror into our hearts today, to think of a pie being kept without
refrigeration for a year before being eaten, but it was an everyday practice
for centuries, and most consumers presumably survived. One of the features of
pies intended for long keeping was that they had an extremely thick, hard,
rye-flour pastry shell which, if it was properly sealed and did not become damp
or cracked, functioned as an air-tight container. The recipe below describes
the process of making such a pie in some detail. It is from a book I have used
as a source several times in the last week - Thomas Dawson’s A Booke of Cookerie. And the order of Meates
to bee served to the Table … (1620.)

To make a pye to keep long

First perboyle your flesh
and presse it, and when it is pressed, season it with Pepper and salt wile it
is hot, then larde it, make your paste of Rie flower, it must be very thick or
else it will not holde, wen it is seasoned and larded, lay it in your Pye, then
cast on it before you close it a good deale of Cloves and Mace beaten small,
and throw upon that a good deale of Butter, and so close it up, you must leave
a hole in the top of the lid, and when it hath stood two houres in the Oven you
must fill it as full of Vineger as you can, then stop the hole as close as you
can with paste, and then set it into the Oven again, your Oven must be very
hote as at first, and then your Pyes will keepe a great while, the longer you
keepe them, the better they will bee: when they be taken out of the Oven and
almost cold, you must shake them betweene your hands, and set them with the
bottome upward, and when you set them into the Oven, take great heede that one
pye touch not another by more then one hand bredth: Remember also to let them
stand in the Oven after the Vineger be in two houres and more.

Thursday, May 22, 2014

I have a
glimpse into the life of mid-sixteenth century European royalty for you today.
My source is The Foreign Quarterly
Review, Volume 11, published in 1833 – although the same piece appeared in several
other journals of the same year.

We now turn to the miscellaneous matter
in these volumes, consisting of extracts relative to the finances, military
regulations, ceremonies, entertainments, &c. of those times, and of
descriptions of Germany, Denmark and England, by Italians, at different epochs.
From the more miscellaneous extracts we shall select what has, perhaps
unreasonably, tickled our fancy, namely, an account of the eatables daily
supplied for the use of Leonora, Queen of France, during a visit she paid to
her brother Charles V at Brussels, in the year 1544, and then conclude with
some of the Italian portraitures of northern countries.

Perhaps the reader will conclude, as we did whilst reading
the list, that this was an ample provision for her majesty’s whole household?
Not at all: it was her private bill of fare, for here follows the allowance for
her train.

“Leonora”
was Eleanor of Austria (1498 –1558.) She was born Archduchess of Austria and Infanta
of Castile and via strategic marriages became firstly, Queen consort of
Portugal and later, of France. She and her siblings virtually comprised the entire
royal families of Europe at the time: her brothers were the Holy Roman Emperor
Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I, and her sisters Queen Isabella
of Denmark, Queen Mary of Hungary, and Queen Catherine of Portugal. Perhaps
luckily, she escaped marriage to Henry VIII of England when he chose her aunt
(who also happened to be his brother’s widow,) Catherine of Aragon instead.

Boil fresh game in two parts water and
one part wine, and when it is done, then cut it into pieces and lay it in a
peppersauce. Let it simmer a while therein. Make [the sauce] so: Take rye
bread, cut off the hard crust and cut the bread into pieces, as thick as a
finger and as long as the loaf of bread is. Brown it over the fire, until it
begins to blacken on both sides. Put it right away into cold water. Do not
allow it to remain long therein. After that put it into a kettle, pour into it
the broth in which the game was boiled, strain it through a cloth, finely chop
onions and bacon, let it cook together, do not put too little in the
peppersauce, season it well, let it simmer and put vinegar into it, then you
have a good peppersauce.

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

William
Ellis (c1700-1758) was a farmer in Herefordshire, England, who became a
prolific and popular writer on agriculture and rural domestic economy. In his
book The Country Housewife's Family
Companion (1750) he discussed oatmeal at some length. The short piece
provides an interesting perspective on the importance of oatmeal to folk of the
time – especially the ‘poorer sort’ – throughout Europe.

In Praise of Oatmeal.

Oats are so valuable a
Pulse, that their Meal is made use of in many Nations. But I presume most of
all in the northern Parts of Europe,
where their Excellence is proved by growing where Wheat, Rye, and some other
Sorts of Grain will not. And by its becoming a cheap, sweet, nourishing, wholesome
Bread, preserves the Lives of Millions of People in sound Health. Six several
Sorts of it may be made, every one finer than the other, as your Anacks,
Janacks, and such like. There are also made of it both thick and thin Oatcakes,
which are pleasant in Taste and much esteemed. But if it be mixt with very fine
Wheat-meal, it maketh a most delicate dainty Oatcake; such that no Prince in
the World but may have them served at his Table. And it i's on this Account
that vast Numbers of them are toasted and consumed in Winter-time especially,
for their agreeable Eating, as a Breakfast with Tea. Great and small Oatmeal
mixed, with Blood and the Liver of either Sheep, Calf, or Swine, maketh that
Black-pudding, which is well known and affected by most Men. Likewise from
small Oatmeal is made that excellent, pleasant, cooling, wholesome Dish called
Flummery: A Food so agreeable to all Constitutions, that Physicians have
praised it for the best of Food to sick and well People, eaten with Honey,
which is reputed the best Sauce, some Wine, either Sack, Claret, or White Wine,
Beer, Ale, or Milk. And for the bigger Sort of Oatmeal called Greets or Grouts,
many Sorts of Puddings are made, as the Black made with the Blood of Swine,
Sheep, Geese, red or sallow Deer, or the like, mixt with Greets or whole
Oatmeal, Suet, and wholesome Herbs. Or else white Puddings; when Greets are
mixed with Cream, Eggs, Crums of Bread, Suet, Currants, and wholesome Spices
stuft in Guts. Of both which Sorts many thousands are sold in Links at Market
in a Year, and accommodates poor People with a Dinner at a cheap Rate; and is a
Repast for the Rich, when these white Gut Puddings have Marrow mixed instead of
Suet. Again, if you roast a Goose, and stop her Belly with whole Greets beaten
together with Eggs, and afterwards mixt with the Gravey, there Ecnnot a more
pleasant Sauce. Nay, if a Man be at Sea in a long Vo yge, he cannot eat a
wholesomer and pleasanter Meal than these whole Greets boiled in Water till
they burst, and then mixt with Butter, and so eaten with Spoons, which although
formerly called Loblolly (now Burgoo) yet there is not any Meat, how
insignificant soever the Name may be, that is more toothsome or wholesome;
besides which, it will in a great Measure supply the Use of Rice. In short, the
right Management of Oatmeal ought to be one of the chiefest Parts of our
Housewife's Study and Care, for indeed no Family can be well thriftily
maintained where this is either scanty or wanting, because both Poor and Rich
generally Boil it with Meat, and make that Broth we call orridge, and the Poor
throughout the Kingdom seldom boil one without the other; for it is to us as
Rice is to the Indian, Sago to the Chinese, and Vermicelli to the
Inhabitants of the Mediterranean Sea
Coast, and is a Common Food for the Sick. The whole Kernels of Oats, called
Grotes (says Mr. Houghton) with Milk,
Butter, Spice, and Pennyroyal, make Oatmeal Puddings; but some put toss them
Suet, Raisins, &c. With the Flower of Oatmeal, Water, and Yeast, are made
Oatcakes, which are baked on a Stone, and at London are toasted, slit, butter'd, and eaten as Rarities: With
Oatmeal, says he, is made Flummery, with Oatmeal is made Caudle for lying-in
Women. In the mountainous Parts of Wales,
and elsewhere, most of the Bread the ordinary People eat are oatcakes made in
divers Forms, and they thrive well and live long with them. With malted Oats is
made pale-colour’d small pleasant Ale, which pleases our Gentry much. I have
heard, (continues Mr. Houghton) that
the Scots use Oats in a great Degree
in their Wars; with a Bag of Oatmeal and a Kettle they’ll sustain themselves a
great while, and indeed it is a fit Corn for their Country, for that Oats may
be sown and mow'd while the Sun is hot, when harder Corn requires a longer
Time. Oats are not only the best Food for Horses, but will also feed Poultry,
and make them lay good Store of Eggs. An Ox (says Mr. Markham) has been fed with them till he was sold for thirty Pounds,
and Sheep, Goats, and Swine, to great Profit; the last in particular, he says,
will fatter apace, if ground Oats are given them with Whey or Butter-milk: But
then, as he observes, their Fat should be hardened with the Feed of some Pease
besides; and in Case the Swine should be seized with Sickness, some Raddle, or
what we call Red-Oker, should be mix'd now and then with their Meat. He also
commends ground Oats thus served for sick Dogs and Poultry, and truly almost
for every live Creature, thinking the same as useful as Salt.

Burgoo, its cheap Use in a poor Man’s Family.

One of my Day Labourers Wives, having four Children, is often
necessitated to find out the cheapest and best Ways to make the daily Shilling
go to the farthest. To this Purpose she often feeds them with Burgoo, by
stirring some Water and a little Salt into a Quart of ground Oatmeal, that it
boils about half an Hour. The longer it boils the thicker it comes; when she
takes it up, she puts a little Bit of Butter amongst it, and eats it. This
saves Bread and Milk, and is reckoned to go as far as a Pottle of Flower, as it
is of a more satiating Nature, for this Quantity will give a hearty wholesome
Dinner to a Man, his Wife and four Children, who eat it with a pleasing
Appetite.

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

The book which provided yesterday’s recipe, A Booke of Cookerie (1620) by Thomas Dawson, is a wonderful source of information
about food and dining in the first decades of the seventeenth century. My
favourite historical cookery books include sample menus for various seasons and
events, and Dawson’s book is no exception. Many of the days of the year at that
time were mandated as fish-days, so it was usual for cookery books to offer
alternative menus for these days too.

The pigges’ petitoes (trotters) are my choice for the recipe
for the day, and here it is, from the above book:

To boyle a Pigs Petitoes.

Take and boyle them in a pint of
Vergice [Verjuice] and Mastard; take 4 Dates minced with a few small Raisins,
then take a little Time [thyme] and chop it small and season it with a little
Sinamon and Ginger, and a quantity of Vergice.

Monday, May 19, 2014

When Charles II was restored to the throne of England in
1660, Parliament granted him annual income of £1,200,000. Unfortunately for the
general public, this proved difficult to fund, even after a perpetual excise on
ale and beer was instituted. Parliament’s solution in 1662 was to impose a type
of property tax. It was determined that the number of hearths (fireplaces) in a
dwelling indicated its approximate size - and, most importantly, was easy to
measure, an appointed inspector merely had to count the number of chimneys on
the building if he could not gain access. At this time of course, the fireplace
was the only source of heating and cooking, so the impact was considerable.
Needless to say, the tax was universally hated – the rich did not like what
they saw as an invasion of their private business, and the poor by definition
were already financially crippled.

The tax payable was 2 shillings per hearth per year, paid in
two installments on the regular days for settling accounts – Michaelmas (29
September) and Lady Day (25 March.) One problem was that in the original system
there was no distinction between owners and occupiers, nor were there any
exemptions. As time went on, poor folk on parish help were exempted, as were
some businesses, but the unpopularity (especially that amongst the powerful
classes) and the Act was abolished in 1689. It was replaced in 1696 by the
infamous Window Tax, which managed to last until 1851.

Over the centuries before
stoves became an everyday feature of the most humble home, fuel was one of
every household’s biggest concerns. Most cooking was done over or in front of
an open fire, and most ordinary homes did not have ovens for bread and pies –
the householder sent the dough to the local baker who, for a fee, put it in his
oven after the commercial bread was removed.

The recipe I have chosen for
you today comes from a book contemporary with the hearth tax. It is the work of
Thomas Dawson, published in 1620 and delighting in the full title of A Booke of Cookerie. And the order of Meates
to bee served to the Table, both for Flesh and Fish dayes. With many excellent
ways for the dressing of all usuall sortes of meates, both Bak’t, boyld or
rosted, of Flesh, fish, Fowle, or others, with their proper sawces. As also
many rare Inventions in Cookery for made Dishes: with most notable preserves of
sundry sorts of Fruits. Likewise for making many precious Waters, with divers
approved Medicines for grievous diseasease.
With certaine points of Husbandry how to order Oxen, Horses, Sheepe,
Hogges, &c. with many other necessary points for Husbandmen to know.

To boyle a Capon with sirrop.

Boyle your Capon in sweet broath, and
put in grosse Pepper and whole Mace into the Capons belly and make your sirrop
with Spinage, white wine, and Currans, Suger, Cinnamon and Ginger, and sweete
Butter and so let them boyle, and when your Capon is ready to serve, put the
sirrop on the Capon, and boyle your Spinage before you make your sirrop.

Friday, May 16, 2014

I
have often found that searching for the answer to a little puzzle commonly
leads to another little mystery. Such is the great joy of research. Today’s
mystery began with a short piece in an Australian newspaper (Perth’s Sunday Times) of 1905. The article
header read ‘My Chinese Dinner’, but no author was given, nor any details about
the circumstances of the meal.

My Chinese Dinner.

The table was set with twenty-two
dishes, and lighted by ten large lanterns. Instead of being served in courses,
the dishes were brought in one at a time, and passed to the guests severally,
beginning with the most distinguished or with the eldest.

Here is a list of them;-

1.Doves with mushrooms and split bamboo sprouts – delicious.

2.Fat pork fritters (or something like fritters) –
splendid.

3.Pigeons’ eggs in meat broth, the whites hard but
transparent – very good.

5.Poultry, different kinds, cooked with mushrooms and
bamboo sprouts – very agreeable.

6.Duck with bamboo and lotus fruits, the fruits looking
and tasting like an acorn without its cup – tolerably good.

7.Hog’s liver fried in castor oil – bad.

8.A Japanese dish of mussels with malodorous codfish and
bacon – horrible.

9.Sea crabs’ tails cooked in castor oil, with bits of
bamboo and ham – would have been palatable but for the wretched oil.

10.A star made of pieces of fowl, bacon, and dove,
covered with white of eggs - very juicy.

11.Slices of sea fish and sharks-fins, with bamboo and
mushrooms – it was hard to tell what kind of dish it was, but it was not good.

12.Giblets of poultry with morels – the morels helped the
giblets down.

13.Ham and cabbage – not particularly nice.

14.A pause now ensued, during which pipes and tobacco
were brought in. The pipes held about a thimbleful of tobacco – enough for two
or three whiffs – and it kept one busy filling and lighting them.

15.15. Land turtles with their eggs in castor oil –
abominable.

16.Ends of ham – good.

17.Ham with sour cabbage – no delicacy.

18.Stale eggs (these eggs had been kept one month in
salt, and two months in moist earth.) The whites looked like moist sugar and
were transparent. The yolks had a greenish color, and the embryos appeared
dark, rolled together and perfectly unrecognizable – a terrible dish.

Dessert –
Conserve of sitzon, a red fruit that looks like a shadberry, and tastes like a
kind of currant – good. Dark green fruit having oval seeds like those of the
plum, preserved in brandy – good. A green oval fruit with a long, hard seed,
resembling a large green olive, but sharp and sour, and disagreeable to the
European taste.

Various
bon-bons, very moderate; baked lichis. The lichi is the finest of Chinese
fruits, having a white flesh with the taste of the best grapes – excellent.
Shaddocks and Mandarin oranges – good.

The only
drinks were tea, very weak and without sugar, and samion, a rich wine which is
drunk hot like tea, and is wretched stuff.

Two
things in this article jumped out at me. One was the unlikelihood that the oil
which was so unpleasant to the writer was actually castor oil (it wasn’t, was
it?) The other was the fruit called ‘sitzon.’ A search for this in the usual
places showed that the article above was the only source for the word – in several
papers published in 1886. The meal had clearly been taken in about 1886, and was
repeated verbatim in the Australian newspaper of 1905 without any contextual
information, but with nothing in the intervening years as far as I have been
able to discover so far.

The
article actually appeared in a number of magazines and papers in 1886 and 1887,
so it was obviously deemed to be of interest to readers of the time. The only
other clue to the circumstances of the meal was given in several of these
publications, and it read simply:

A
Chinese Dinner in High Life. A member of a Bremen trading-house lately had
the honor of taking dinner with a Chinese magnate in Pekin, and has given an
appetizing description of the feast. (Popular
Science Monthly of February, 1886)

If
you have any mad guesses as to why an article about an event in 1886 would be
re-published in 1905, don’t be shy, shout them out!

And
if you have any clue what sitzon might be please do let us all know in the
comments!

As
the recipe for the day, I give you a little something from a piece entitled ‘Be
your own Chinese Chef’ in the Western
Champion (Parkes, NSW) of 2nd December 1932.

Chinese Chicken Soup.

For Chinese chicken soup, use one and one-half cupfuls of raw
chicken run through the meat grinder eight times. Cover with five cupfuls of
cold water and add two teaspoonfuls of salt or soy sauce and let it stand a
half our; bring to the boiling point and add a quarter of a cupful of sage;
cook gently for 20 minutes; add one-third cupful of thinly sliced celery, one
cupful cooked mushrooms and very gently stir in one well-beaten egg to make the
tiny yellow shreds characteristic of Chinese soups. Garnish each serving with a
sprinkling of ground cooked ham.

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Yesterday’s recipe using clary got me thinking about the
other varieties of sage, and made me realise how little blog space I have
allocated to the Salvia genus so far.

The
name ‘Salvia’ derives from the Latin salvere, the verb related to salus, which means health
(and prosperity and salvation,) and signifies the reputed medicinal benefits of
the plants. In The
Universal Library Or, Compleat Summary of Science, by Henry Curzon,
published in 1712, the author says that “Sage comforts the Sinews, is good
against Trembling, and dryeth Humours.”

If
you suffer from uncomfortable sinews or the trembles, perhaps a little Sage
Wine would help?

Sage Wine, very good.

To twenty-eight Pounds of Malaga Raisins pick’d and shred, have
twenty-eight Quarts of Spring-water well boil’d, but let it be cool as Milk
from the Cow, before you put in the Raisins; then put in half a Bushel of Red Sage,
grossly shred; stir all together and let it stand six Days, stirring it very
well every Day, and cover it as close as you can; then strain it off, and pour
it into your Vessel; it will soon be fine, but you may add two Quarts of Sack
or White-wine to fine it; Raisins of the Sun will do as well as Malaga, if they
cannot be had.

A Collection of Above Three Hundred Receipts
in Cookery, Physick, and Surgery: For the Use of All Good Wives, Tender
Mothers, and Careful Nurses (1734)

by
Mary Kettilby.

And if wine,
why not cheese? The following recipe also uses red sage (Salvia miltiorrhiza.)

To make a plain sage
cheese.

Bruise the tops of young red sage in a
mortar, till you can press the juice out of them; bruise likewise some leaves
of spinach or spinage, and having squeez'd out the juice, mix it with that of
sage to render it of a pleasant green colour, which the juice of the sage alone
will not make it, and this will also allay the bitter taste of the sage.

Having prepar'd the juice put the
rennet to the milk, and at the same time mix with it as much of the sage,
&c. juice as will give the milk the green colour you desire, putting in
more or less of the sage juice to that of the spinage juice according as you
would would have the cheese taste stronger or weaker of the sage.

When the curd is come, break it gently,
and when it is all equally broken, put it into the cheese-vat or mote and press
it gently, and the gentle pressing will make it eat tender and mellow, when on
the contrary the pressing of it hard will make it eat, hard; when it has stood
in the press about eight hours it must be tasted.

The London and Country Cook: Or,
Accomplished Housewife (1749) by Charles Carter.

Common, or Garden Sage is, of course, a fine traditionally flavouring
for all manner of meat dishes. Here, from the book mentioned above, The Universal Library Or, Compleat Summary
of Science (1712) is a fine example:

To Boyle a Leg of Veal and Bacon.

Lard your Leg of Veal with Bacon all
over, with a little Lemon-Peel amongst it; then boyl it with a piece of Middle
Bacon; when the Bacon is boyled, let it be cut in Slices, Season it with Pepper
and Dried Sage mixed together; Dish up your Veal with Bacon round about it. Let
it be sent up with Saucers of Green Sauce, and strew over it Parsley and
Barberries.

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Yesterday I gave you a recipe for fresh vermicelli from one
of my favourite eighteenth century sources. I have to admit that part of the
reason I love this book is on account of its title, which, in full, is:

The Whole Duty of a Woman, or, An Infallible
Guide to the Fair Sex.Containing
Rules, Directions, and Observations, for Their Conduct and Behavior Through All
Ages and Circumstances of Life, as Virgins, Wives, Or Widows. With Direction,
how to obtain all Useful and Fashionable Accomplishments suitable to the Sex.
In which are comprised al Parts of Good Housewifry, particularly Rules and
Receipts in Every Kind of Cookery.(1737)

Another
reason for particularly enjoying this book is that it contains recommendations
for bills of fare for every month in the year – and menus are one of my
favourite themes, as you know. Dinners
of any degree of importance whatsoever were at this time arranged in two
courses, with each containing both sweet and savoury dishes, with the finer and
more elegant dishes appearing in the second course. All dishes for each course were
placed on the table in a strictly balanced and hierarchical arrangement – the intention
being to create an impressive spectacle as guests entered the dining room. At
the end of the first course, all food was removed and the table was re-set with
the second-course dishes.

Bearing in
mind that this was a Northern hemisphere publication, and it was therefore
Springtime, here is the recommended bill of fare for the month of May.

Many of the
dishes on this menu appear in previous posts on this blog – I have linked to
some of them in the menu above, as you will see. I would dearly love to have
given you the recipe for ‘Briscuit of Beef a
la Chalo’, but this is not included in the book, and has so far proved
elusive. Instead I give you a delightful dish of herb fritters, and as a bonus,
some artichoke bottoms in cream.

Clary is Salvia sclarea, or Clary Sage. The genus
Salvia belongs in the very widespread and prolific mint family. Many species
are cultivated as pot herbs, including the common sage (Salvia officinalis.)

Clary fry’d with Eggs.

Wash, pick, and dry your Clary with a
Cloth; then beat up the Yolks of six Eggs with a little Flour and Salt, make
the Batter light, then dip in every Leaf and fry them singly, and send them up
quick and dry.

Artichoke Bottoms with Cream.

Get Artichoke Bottoms, boil them in
Water, and when they are boiled, toss them up with Butter in a Stew-pan, then
put to them some Cream, with a Bunch of C[h]ives and parsley; thicken your
Sauce with the Yolk of an Egg, and put in a little Salt and Nutmeg. Serve them
in Plates or Dishes.